


Padding the Nest

by Deannie



Series: Young Mister Ryan and His Undercover Cousin [4]
Category: Castle, The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Cousins, Episode: s05e18 The Wild Rover, Gen, Magnificent Seven AU: ATF, Pre-ATF, Undercover, pre-12th precinct
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 10:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5825644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezra had never gotten along with his own team more than superficially, for the most part, but this new crew was something else entirely. It was led by a middling bureaucrat named Bartlett, who had little interest in the interpersonal skills of his agents, and the active branch of it was a trio of men who seemed a little too zealous when it came to force. They didn’t need an outsider coming in, they averred. And, once they were told they had to lump it and take him, they were anything but sanguine about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place at the end of Kevin's undercover stint with the Irish Mob.

Cormac O’Connell was Irish by the sight of him—green eyes and sandy brown hair too long on all sides—but his voice was a flat north New Jersey patter. He’d been dealing for drug runners and providing muscle for hire his entire adult life. It was sort of a family business.

His cellphone rang at just after 2 am Atlanta time, but he was too busy to answer. It buzzed away in the pocket of his jacket, where the article of clothing lay over a chair in Mick Hanlon’s game room. Mick was a local protection consultant who never took no for an answer. He was also a well-known distributor, of drugs primarily, but he would move whatever was needed if the price was right. He’d left his own family business in Boston—mostly protection rackets and gun running—and settled in Atlanta fifteen years ago, and for the most part, he’d been successful at keeping his profit margin up and his head down.

At least until an FBI agent who was investigating him had disappeared last year. No one could pin it on him, but over the ten months of their friendship, Mick had told Cormac enough for him to piece together what happened. On paper, though, Mick was clean. And filthy rich.

“I’ll raise you five,” Cormac said, tossing a chip into the sizable kitty. By his count, the winner of this pot would walk out Hanlon’s door nearly $8000 richer. As the dealer, he was well aware of who the winner would be.

Across the table from him, Eric Stabler, very like Cormac in looks, if not in temperament, studied his cards a bit too long. “Are you going do something, Stabler, or just fondle the damn things?” Mick asked in his broad Boston accent.

Stabler smiled, Southern drawl lazy and unconcerned. “Apologies, Mick,” he said quietly. “I was considering my options.” He sat up straighter and took the last three chips from his pile, stacking them neatly on the table. “I’ll see your five and raise you ten.”

Mick chuckled, calling Eric’s raise with the ease of a man who doesn’t need the money, win or lose. “You’re a fighter, Eric,” he said with a slap to Stabler’s narrow shoulder. “I’ll give you that.”

Cormac sighed. Eric Stabler was a problem, his open, amiable nature one that Mick naturally embraced. He’d have to come up with a way to get rid of the man before he captured Mick’s attention too fully. Cormac wasn’t ready to be supplanted as Number Two in this organization—there was just too much at stake.

“Yeah, well, your fighting days are over, Stabler,” he said flatly, turning over a jack-high straight. “Looks like I’m still going home the winner.”

“Not so fast, O’Connell,” Mick declared with a grin as he flipped over the straight flush Cormac had painstakingly dealt him. “The money’s staying here with me.”

Eric threw in his cards and sighed at his empty chip tray and his empty glass. “I expect that’s my cue to leave, gentlemen,” he said breezily.

“Come by the bar Sunday night,” Mick called to him as Eric gathered his coat and headed for the door. “We might have a security job for you.”

“I’ll be there, Mr. Hanlon.”

The door closed behind the Southerner and Cormac shook his head. Stabler was hungry. Ambitious. He was being subtle, but he wanted the whole pie, and that was not going to get Cormac what _he_ wanted. Time to start planting seeds. “Are you sure you can trust him, Mick?” He looked over at the closed door speculatively. “He’s awful new to just be taking him into the fold, isn’t he?”

Mick stared at Cormac long enough that a normal man would be sweating. Cormac O’Connell merely took a sip of his whiskey.

“I like him,” Mick said finally. “Besides, you haven’t even been here a year, and you’re damn near running the place.”

Cormac chuckled. “You can like a rat, but he’s still a rat,” he said, gathering up his own chips and tallying the total in his head. “Damn. Only two-fifty—you don’t pay me enough to play poker with you.”

Mick rose and headed for the safe in the corner, dialing the combination with a quick ease, his body blocking Cormac’s view. Again. “You’re losing your touch, O’Connell.”

Cormac smiled and accepted the two-hundred-and-fifty dollars Mick had taken from the safe. “Might be I’m lulling you into a false sense of security. Did you ever think of that?” He rose, heading for his coat. He’d worked damn hard to make sure Hanlon got that flush.

“I don’t have a sense of security.” Hanlon’s eyes went from lively to deadly in a blink. “And you know it.” He drained what was left of his scotch. “Don’t worry. This deal with Alvarez goes down, we’ll all be sitting pretty.”

If they lived. Cormac suppressed a shiver and shrugged into his coat, feeling for his phone and keys. “I gotta get home. Have fun counting my money.”

Hanlon just laughed and waved him out.

****

Cormac didn’t bother to look at his phone when he got home. Didn’t bother to do more than walk through the house and out into the back garden, straight to the dark corner on the south side, far from any of the listening devices he knew Hanlon just loved to use. Gone were the days when a henchmen was safe from prying eyes in his own home. The 21st century wasn't always all it was cracked up to be.

He sat cross-legged on the ground and closed his eyes for a long minute, enjoying the lack of scrutiny for the space of a few dozen heartbeats. Hanlon was relentless and Cormac was tired. Things were coming to a head with Alvarez’s arrival on Sunday, and the game would soon be over.

After 10 months, it was about damn time.

He pulled out his phone finally, and read the notifications on the lock screen.

`2:03 am`  
` Missed Call`  
`Fenton O’Connell`

`2:05 am`  
`Voicemail`  
`Fenton O’Connell`

“Damn.” He and Fenton had talked a number of times in the last ten months, but the younger man never called him in the dead of night. With a sense of dread, he opened the voicemail.

“Cormac, it’s Fenton. The narcs got to Danny Shannon—Breen, too. I’ve been ratted out.” Fenton sounded angry and stressed, but not hurt, so Cormac took a breath. “I gotta go. Now. We’ve got a rat somewhere but we haven’t found it yet. Figure whoever it is’ll be dead when they’re got. I am too, if I don’t disappear.” Cormac nodded his approval in the darkness. “I’ll call if I can, but don’t expect it. I’m not being hung on this one. Bye.”

Cormac sighed, a tension going out of his bones and a change coming over his features. Hanlon loved his bugs, but he was no good with cameras, so the change in the man in the garden went unobserved. The hardness dropped from his features and he was suddenly younger, sharper—less a thug than a man.

FBI agent Ezra Standish allowed Cormac's persona to slide away for a moment and smiled to himself at the message. Kevin Ryan was out of the Irish mob. Finally. Fourteen months, his young cousin had been undercover with the Shannon gang on Staten Island. Now the head of the operation, Danny Shannon, and his shrew of a wife were in custody. _I’m not getting hung on this one._ That must mean Kevin’s extraction was clean enough that he could keep his cover intact, the phone call no doubt meant to pad the nest in case Fenton was ever needed again. Which boded well for Ezra, just now.

Ezra had first used Cormac O’Connell as a cover when he was with the Bureau office in Chicago eight years ago. There had been a real Cormac, his look eerily like Ezra's own. A two-bit drug dealer who had died in a police raid, Cormac had been anonymous muscle for the drug dealers he'd died protecting—drug dealers now too dead to tell anyone that the Cormac who came begging for a job after his boss was gunned down was an imposter. When the operation was over, Ezra banked the undercover identity, setting O'Connell up with a trip to a federal prison and making sure he could be used again if needed. Since then, Ezra had used the cover a handful of times, always successfully.

When his cousin Kevin Ryan, a narcotics officer in the NYPD, told him he was going under deep with Shannon’s crew, it hadn’t taken long to create a paper trail linking his persona, Fenton O’Connell, with Cormac as brothers. It gave both of them a contact unrelated to their respective departments. A safety net Ezra was certain they both needed.

Perhaps he more than Kevin, as things stood here in Atlanta, he thought, his relief at Kevin’s extraction tempered by the worry he had been unable to shake during his own time undercover. He’d been loaned to another team for this operation—O’Connell’s history and connections were credible, and Hanlon had a penchant for hiring from up east. Cormac being Irish was just an added bonus.

Ezra had never gotten along with his own team more than superficially, for the most part, but this new crew was something else entirely. It was led by a middling bureaucrat named Bartlett, who had little interest in the interpersonal skills of his agents, and the active branch of it was a trio of men who seemed a little too zealous when it came to force. They didn’t need an outsider coming in, they averred. And, once they were told they had to lump it and take him, they were anything but sanguine about it.

The one he worried most about was a slick agent named Rick Fallon. Very like himself—fine clothes, neat appearance, cultured air—Fallon had a deadly cast to him that set Ezra’s teeth on edge. Mostly because he was entirely unsure whether Fallon could be trusted to have anyone’s back but his own. Rick, in turn, made it known he didn’t trust Ezra with the operation. It wasn’t that Standish didn’t have a superlative close rate, he’d say loudly, it was that the close rate was a little _too_ superlative. It just didn’t track…

There was such irony in the fact that being good at your job made you look bad, wasn’t there?

But right now, suspicions on both ends aside, this borrowed team was all he had to take down both the major local cocaine distributor and a major route of drugs from Mexico all the way to the Eastern Seaboard. And now that he had proof that Mick had had Agent Brody shot last summer, he could add the murder of a federal agent to his list of crimes.

With that thought he uncovered a small box, hidden in a hole beneath the massive magnolia tree, and unlocked it, withdrawing a burner cellphone and dialing a local number.

“It’s the middle of the night, Standish,” his own team member Bryan Marks grated. “You can’t call in at a human time?”

Ezra rolled his eyes. He’d been allowed to keep Marks as his contact, to make sure things went as smoothly as possible, but the man had always been a little lazy, which could be as dangerous as outright enmity in a handler right now.

“I have a time for the meet with Alvarez,” he said simply, his Southern accent still covered by Cormac’s New Jersey persona. “I don’t have a location yet. I’ll get it on Sunday.”

“What about Stabler?” Marks asked finally. “He still trying to steal your boyfriend?”

Ezra wrinkled his nose at the euphemism. Eric Stabler was enough like Ezra when he was himself to annoy him. He enjoyed being Cormac O'Connell, but it burned that, apparently, he could have waltzed in as himself and been accepted just as easily. He'd tried to plant the seeds of doubt about Stabler tonight, but he wasn't sure how he could make them grow. Unless... Ezra smiled in the darkness. “I think I’ve found a way around that, actually. Can you dig up everything we have on his known associates and their current whereabouts?”

"Sure," Marks grunted. "Can it be in broad daylight, though?"

Ezra sighed. "I expect it won't hurt anything. I have three days before the meet, after all."

He passed on the rest of the information from the summit Hanlon had run this afternoon, seeing the overweight forty-something agent in his mind’s eye, writing it all down in his notebook. Marks rang off without a well-wish or goodbye, and Ezra sat thinking a long moment, flipping the cellphone over and over in his hands. Kevin deserved some time off, but Ezra knew intimately how difficult actually doing that really was. He nodded to himself finally, and dialed a number he wasn’t even sure was in service anymore.

“Yeah? Um... Ryan,” came a soft, exhausted voice over the line, as if the speaker had momentarily forgotten his own name. Kevin was obviously still awake, but he was flagging. The noises in the background indicated he was probably at the precinct.

“Congratulations,” Ezra hailed him quietly.

“Ezra! You got my message.” Kevin sounded done in. Ezra knew exactly what that was like, when you were coming down from being someone else, trying to remember who you’d been before you started wearing their clothes.

“I did. Where’s Fenton?”

A thread of reluctance ran through Kevin’s voice. “In the wind,” he replied. “They were getting pressure from the DEA to move in, so they pulled me out.”

“You did a good job of staying alive as long as you did,” Ezra told him truthfully. “Count your blessings.”

“…Yeah,” Kevin finally agreed, a bit reluctantly.

There was clearly more to this, but Ezra wasn’t in a position to figure it out right now. With luck, his own operation would be done come Sunday night and he could call his cousin next week to catch up properly.

“From your call, I take it your cover is still good?” he asked, glad now that he'd hatched his plan. “I think I could use a distraction here.” _And so could you._

Kevin perked up over the line, and Ezra smiled. “Yeah. Um, Danny’s had my phone tapped for at least a year now. I don’t know if Bobby S. knew, but just in case, I figured I’d let you know I was out and pad the nest at the same time.”

“Smart boy,” Ezra praised teasingly.

“Shut up,” Kevin lobbed back. He sounded a bit better, anyway. “Sorry you’re still in, though. So what do you need Fenton for?”

“A couple of texts should do it, I think,” Ezra said, the plan unfolding in his head. “I have a problem here by the name of Eric Stabler…”

*******

“Alvarez will meet us at the warehouse on Mitchum at 4:00 am.”

Cormac watched lazily as Mick looked around at the five men he’d picked for the operation. It was sundown on Sunday night, and Cormac knew from experience that Mick would give them all a couple of hours to “do your own thing” before he expected them back. Time enough to get done what he needed to.

“We go in armed and ready, but this is a business transaction, boys,” Mick warned them. “No one goes off half-cocked.”

The Smith boys both nodded, along with Joey Green. Cormac said nothing, and Eric gave Mick a too eager, “Whatever you say, Mick.”

It was too perfect.

As they were getting ready to leave, Cormac’s phone buzzed and he made a show of pulling it out and cursing.

“What is it?” Mick asked, with just the right sting to his voice to say he’d been listening in on the bugs at Cormac’s house. Cormac had been very careful Thursday night to replay Fenton’s original voicemail on speakerphone in his living room, then call and fail to reach his brother. But he hadn’t said a word of it to Mick.

“It’s my kid brother,” he said. “Danny Shannon was taken down by the NYPD. Fenton thinks there’s a rat still on the loose there.” He gestured to his phone, where Fenton O’Connell had left a text that said simply, `Bobby S. is looking for Nick Brady.`

“Nick Brady?” Cormac said quietly, frustration and confusion in his voice, while his eyes watched Eric tense slightly. He fought a smile. “From New Orleans?” Eric was sweating now. The FBI had records that the two men had worked together frequently, Marks had told him. Brady was currently under surveillance by the NOPD, but no one needed to know that, now did they? “You worked down there, right Eric?”

“Yes, I did,” Eric agreed, his hands too casual at his sides. “I never met Nick,” he said. Too quickly. “Ran in a different crew.”

Cormac saw Mick’s eyes narrow. Good.

“Damn.” He shook his head, stressed and worried as any big brother would be. Cormac had taken phone calls from Fenton in Mick’s presence before, and the affection the two men shared was never faked. “Fenton’s taken off—someone dropped a dime on him and he’ll bring heat down on the whole crew of them if he’s caught. Not worth it.”

Mick nodded, appreciative of the loyalty. “Smart kid,” he said. “Maybe, once the flames die down a little we can find a place for him here.”

Cormac smiled. “Not sure you could handle two O’Connell boys in the same place, Mick,” he joked lightly. “Thanks, though.”

That twinge took him—for just a moment. He hated when he liked them. He hated when the thieves showed honor among them, when they took care of their own… Sometimes it almost made being the good guy feel like being the bad guy.

He wondered if that was the shadow he’d heard in Kevin’s voice.

“You gonna be good for tonight?” Mick asked, concerned.

Cormac shook his head, angry that he'd lost focus. _If you’re not allowed to remember who you are, remember who_ he _is,_ he schooled himself. He sniffed dismissively. “Fenton’s resourceful. He’ll be all right.” He looked into Mick’s eyes and sold the con for all he was worth. _Trust me._ “I have your back, Mick. You know that.”

********

Cormac carried the cash. Always. Hanlon hadn’t trusted another man with a briefcase in months because Cormac was just that loyal and steadfast. Which was the utter truth—he just wasn’t loyal to who Hanlon thought he was.

The six of them stood at the south door of the warehouse and Hanlon motioned for Stabler, Joey, and the Smith boys to range themselves around the area, ready for anything. Much as he hoped tonight was the end of Mick Hanlon’s reign here in Atlanta, Cormac had seen things go bad before. He needed to make sure Mick was turning to him for safety, not the new guy he’d taken a shine to. Cormac waited until Stabler was out of earshot before he cleared his throat.

“You got something to say, Corm?” Mick asked, scanning the area carefully as he spoke.

“Fenton sent me another text while we were on our way out here—I guess he’s been talking to someone back on the Island since he went underground…” He sounded stressed and disappointed as he drew out his phone and showed Hanlon the text still on the lock screen of his phone.

`FENTON O’CONNELL`  
`BS says you got your own rat.`  
` ES out of NOLA. Watch your ass.`

Hanlon stood still a long moment. “Fuck,” he murmured. “You think the info’s legit?”

Cormac bristled slightly, offended that his little brother wouldn’t be believed. “Bobby S. is taking over for his dad. You know those Shannons have ears in a lot of places.” He shook his head, oozing friendship and loyalty. “You may like a rat, Mick…”

Mick’s eyes hardened. “But he’s still a rat.” He looked over to where Stabler was crouched in the darkness. “Let’s get through this deal with Alvarez. We’ll take care of the problem then.”

“Sure, Mick,” Cormac agreed blandly.

At length, a long black SUV drove in through the north entrance and parked close to the table Hanlon had had set up here in the open. Two forgettable thugs stepped out of the car, followed by a tall, rangy, handsome Mexican man, all slicked-back black hair and dark, flashing eyes. Carlos Alvarez.

Alvarez stepped forward, his two men flanking him, while four more exited the vehicle and ranged themselves around it. A driver remained in the car.

“Mr. Hanlon,” Alvarez greeted, not coming close enough to clasp hands. His voice was lightly accented and deep. “We are ready to discuss business, yes?”

Hanlon nodded. “Seems to me that, with my connections and your blow, we could do some great things here.”

Alvarez grinned. “That would depend on how much you bring to the table, Senor Hanlon.”

At Mick’s signal, Cormac opened the briefcase, spinning it around on the table to show off the $180,000 dollars to the man across from him. Alvarez gestured one of his men forward to investigate.

“First installment,” Mick promised. “Plus protection in the area. The works. You keep me happy, I’ll keep you happy.”

Alvarez’s man nodded his approval and Cormac shut the case.

“So what do you say?” Mick asked.

Alvarez leaned over to discuss it with the man who had checked out the money. His dark eyes were deadly as he looked at Hanlon, and Cormac kept a hand on the Glock he carried in his shoulder holster.

Mick was unperturbed. “Do we have a deal?” he asked after Alvarez’s almost silent discussion had ended.

“You are asking for a lot of cocaine—and a lot of faith—for very little money, Senor Hanlon,” Alvarez said quietly. “Perhaps if you were to sweeten the deal?” He looked over at Cormac and the briefcase. Cormac resisted the urge to look around himself. Fallon’s team better be as good as they seemed to be.

Hanlon snorted. “Look, Alvarez, I told you when we talked last—I’m asking fair value and I’m offering you my distribution system. This is win-win.” His eyes hardened. “Don’t make it difficult, yeah?”

Alvarez stood a moment, as if thinking, though Cormac could see his mind was already made up. At length he smiled, and reached out a hand for Mick to clasp. “I believe we have a deal.”

“Freeze! FBI!”

Rick Fallon’s authoritative voice had everyone doing just that, for a second.

Cormac threw up his hands and looked over at his boss in frustration. Mick, for his part, looked over at where Eric Stabler was hidden, and lunged for him.

“You rat!” he yelled, slamming Stabler to the floor. “You fucking sold us out!”

The distraction was all Alvarez’s men needed to start shooting at drug dealers and feds alike. Cormac dove for a convenient stack of crates, pulling out his sidearm and returning fire. He hit one of Alvarez’s goons high in the shoulder at the same moment as a shot from behind his own back drilled into Alvarez’s chest. The drug dealer fell flat and lay still, so Cormac focused on bringing down the rest of the crew as quickly as possible.

He kept one ear on Mick and Stabler. The two were locked in a fistfight that had nothing to do with the bullets flying around them.

“God damn it, Hanlon, get the fuck off me!” A sharp, small-caliber explosion went off, and Mick Hanlon slumped off of the shorter Stabler. Eric shoved himself to his feet and aimed his gun at Cormac. “One less rung on the ladder, huh, O’Connell? Wanna help me claw my way up a little further?”

Cormac O’Connell made a nearly fatal error at this point. He had seen, out of the corner of his eye, the FBI flak jacket on whoever had taken up position behind him. He trusted that that person would have his back. He raised his own gun to cover Stabler.

“Drop the gun, Stabler,” he called. “You don’t have to—“

His words were cut off by the sound of a gunshot and a blinding pain. In his back, not his chest. The force of the shot caused him to fire his gun and spun him around. In the sickening swirl of the movement, he again caught sight of that FBI vest.

Had his own man just…?

The pain engulfed him and left him mute and blind, but he heard another shot go off. Another. Neither hit him, though, and he struggled to get his wits about him. _Get it together, Ezra,_ he grated in his mind, the persona of Cormac O’Connell stripped away by the force of the shot and the sharp, hot, flooding pain in his back. _Get up. Nothing’s safe here. Nothing…_

He managed to open his eyes a slit, at least, if not to grip his Glock a little tighter. The sight that reached him had him puzzled.

He knew Fallon and his team disliked him, even distrusted him. He knew some of them were more mercenary than they should be, though he couldn’t prove it. He’d never have thought, though, that any of them had it in him to literally shoot him in the back.

But as he lay there, trying to breathe, he looked up through the fog to see Rick Fallon standing safe behind a crate, a satisfied smirk on his face. Exactly where a shooter should be. And somehow it seemed to be plain in his eyes. Fallon hadn’t shot at Eric Stabler and missed. He hadn’t fired at Cormac O’Connell.

Rick Fallon had shot Ezra Standish. A fellow federal agent.

The knowledge left Ezra terrified as pain and blood loss ushered him into unconsciousness. Because really, there was no reason for Fallon to let him wake up again, was there?

******  
to be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

So waking up was a surprise, though pain and painkillers made it difficult for him to say why. Waking up alone in a nondescript hospital room wasn’t, though. He had no one here in Atlanta who cared much for him after all. Why would any of his coworkers stay? And certainly, even if they had contacted his mother, she had better things to do than fly to Atlanta to visit the son who had made the same horrible life decision that had cost her her first husband. 

Ezra was sure he must have drifted in and out for a long while after that initial rise to consciousness. He remembered, vaguely, a nurse. A doctor. Then a whole gaggle of doctors together…. Eventually, he found himself almost clear and staring at the ceiling, exhausted enough that he could barely turn his head. 

He did, though, and took stock of his condition carefully. His left arm was strapped tight to his torso and he could dimly feel, through the layers of painkillers, a large wad of bandaging over the worst of the burning sensation in his back. He could breathe without trouble, though it hurt when he pushed it. His right arm sported an IV that itched and was surrounded by bruising. Other than that, it seemed he was intact. 

He guessed he should be lucky he wasn’t dead. And then, as his strength ebbed back, he began to wonder what happened. 

Eventually, the door to the room opened, and John Bartlett poked his head in and stared at him for a long moment. 

Fallon followed behind his boss, a look of generic, bland concern on his face, and Ezra tensed, a pain shooting from his shoulderblade into the base of his skull. The warehouse came back to him in an instant and Ezra remembered everything. _Fallon, a satisfied smirk on his face…_

_Perhaps I spoke too soon,_ he thought to himself. 

“Standish,” Bartlett greeted him in his no nonsense fashion. “Been waiting for you to wake up. You had us worried. Fallon said they couldn’t get the bleeding stopped on the scene. He didn’t see Green coming up behind you until it was too late.” 

Ezra shook himself mentally, looking away from Fallon with effort. Joey had been on the other side of the warehouse… Hadn’t he? Fallon should have been an undercover agent himself. His face betrayed nothing. 

“It appears I’ll survive, sir,” Ezra replied placidly, betraying nothing himself. His accent was that strange bridge between his cover’s and his own that he knew would even out in time but that irritated him while it was happening. “What of the rest of Hanlon’s crew?” 

“Fallon took down Green, of course,” Bartlett said. _To save my life,_ Ezra finished for him, disbelieving. He was so sure… “It looks like Stabler killed Hanlon and Alvarez’s men killed Bobby Smith. Stabler and Johnny Smith are still with us, but it’ll be a while before either can be arraigned. Alvarez and a couple of his men are alive and in DEA custody—asshole had a bulletproof vest, so he’s fit to sit in a holding cell. Can’t say he’s too comfortable, though.” 

Fallon smiled cruelly. Ezra was unsurprised. He pushed away his own frustration and concentrated on the moment at hand. There was simply no way a fellow agent had shot him, was there? Surely he was just confused… 

“We got the whole meet on tape, and a briefcase with $100,000 as proof of the buy. Alvarez is going down and he knows it. Might even get him to roll over on a few people if we promise not to extradite him to Mexico for his warrants there.” 

_$100,000._ A chill swept through Ezra and he looked up to see Fallon watching him. The threat to silence in that non-glare was fairly unmistakable. Ezra wondered, amid his horror, where Fallon stashed his stolen money, because this couldn’t be the first time he’d done this. Ezra had suspected the man wasn’t quite on the right side of the law, but this… 

Lord, he needed out of this town before he left it in a pine box. 

Bartlett smiled in satisfaction. “As for Hanlon’s operation, the raid on his house should clean up what’s left of the crew, along with the evidence you uncovered about the hit on Agent Huber last year.” 

“It sounds as if we’ve done our duty, then, haven’t we, sir?” he said, maintaining the con and grinning tiredly. “I suppose I shall spend my recuperation filling out the paperwork I’ve missed in the last year?” 

“We’ll give you a few days off,” Bartlett said with a smile, oblivious to the tension thick between his agent and their borrowed undercover man. “At least until you’re out of the hospital.” He turned to leave, “Oh, and you’ll be glad to know your cover’s still intact.” A small part of Ezra actually perked up at that. He did like being Cormac O’Connell. The thug was like a comfortable shirt. “You’ll be arraigned with whichever of the others recovers first so we can get that part over with.” 

Fallon stayed behind a step and turned to look Ezra straight in the face as he went. “Guess it was good Stabler saw you get shot,” he said, a mock warmth in his words that froze Ezra solid. “Bet he still thinks you’re one of them. What do you call that? Padding the nest, right?” 

He’d see Rick Fallon’s face in his nightmares for weeks. _My God…_

“Just so, Mr. Fallon,” he agreed, finally taking a breath when the door closed behind his colleagues. 

“Though I expect mine is far less padded than yours.” 

***** 

It was ten days before Ezra made it home. He’d developed an infection as a result of the bullet wound, and the IV antibiotics made him sick and listless. His growing certainty that he’d been shot down by his own man left him shaking from nightmares and lacking in sleep. 

As he’d expected, he had few visitors; Marks came by a couple of times, and his AiC Pontiere, but Ezra didn’t mention his suspicions about Fallon to either of them. He needed a better idea of what had really happened before he began accusing the man, if he chose to accuse him at all. He learned from Pontiere that Halsted and Jensen, the other two active agents on his team, had been transferred since he’d been away, which meant he was starting anew with a group of strangers. What little help and support he’d thought he might get from his own people was stripped away, just like that. 

Without companions to distract him, he tried unsuccessfully to block out the memory of the shooting by surfing the limited channel selection on the hospital room TV. Danny and Breen Shannon made national news, though the manner of their capture was glossed over. 

Ezra thought about calling Kevin more than once, but realized that his own current ill-health and worse mood weren’t what his young cousin needed. He remembered the call he’d made ten months ago to let Kevin know that the Cormac O’Connell cover was being activated. It was bad business to have two related covers active in two unrelated operations at the same time, but it couldn’t be helped. “Fenton” had seemed _too_ glad to hear from him, and Ezra was unsurprised. Kevin was a good cop and a better man, and while he’d heard Ezra’s war stories, Ezra knew the younger man had never really understood how much of oneself you gave up when you became someone else. They’d talked in coded platitudes a dozen more times since then, and Ezra knew his cousin was in for a very rude homecoming. 

Learning to be yourself again was hard. 

Even now, standing in the foyer of his modest apartment, Ezra found it all alien. It was like he’d broken into someone else’s place, one that hadn’t been lived in for a while. He’d have to work up the energy to go shopping, and Miss Lenore would have to be called to do a proper spring cleaning on the musty place. 

Lord, he was tired. 

Cormac O’Connell had been arraigned this morning and a motion made to extradite him to California immediately for crimes committed there. It would keep the cover going. Johnny Smith had been the first of Hanlon’s men out of the hospital, and he’d stood with Cormac in the courthouse holding cell and vowed he’d take care of Stabler, the rat among them. 

Ezra suggested to Bartlett that they have the two men incarcerated in separate facilities before Bartlett had washed his hands of him, telling him he was expected back by his own team after a week-long vacation. 

He’d need that long just to remember how to be himself. Which brought back thoughts of his cousin in New York, and unwelcome thoughts of his own situation here. He needed to talk to someone he could trust. Not about anything important, mind—that was a burden the younger man hardly needed. Just a friendly voice… 

He hauled himself across the room to the locked cabinet that held his personal cellphone, computer, and backup armaments. He had dozens of voicemails and missed calls—ten months was far too long. At a quick glance, he found that a few of them were from his Aunt Lillian, Kevin’s mom, and he felt a pang of guilt at that. Aunt Lil was a good mother, and having her son undercover for so long must have eaten at her. She’d called him once, a month and a half after Kevin left for Staten Island, and he’d tried to give her what comfort he could. It hadn’t seemed to be much… 

Well, Kevin was home now, hopefully being smothered by the whole crowd of them. He’d call Aunt Lil later, but he needed to talk to Kevin now. Ryan had been home for two weeks at this point, long enough for the thoughts and doubts to creep in. Even when an operation was successful, you spent your down time wondering what you could have done differently, or berating yourself for choices you made when you were in the thick of it. 

It could be like poison in the veins, and he didn’t need Kevin going through that if he could help him. Honestly, a part of him was hoping this whole thing had soured the narcotics officer on undercover work. Much as being other people was Ezra’s life, he wouldn’t wish it on a man like Kevin Ryan. 

He dialed Kevin’s cellphone and let it ring. And ring. He’d almost decided to call his aunt’s house instead when his cousin finally picked up. “Ryan,” he greeted, sounding as if he’d just woken up. Ezra looked at the clock: 1:15 in the afternoon. 

“Sleeping late, Young Mister Ryan?” he teased. “If you are lying on Aunt Lil’s couch with Judge Judy in the background, I shall have you declared a deadbeat child.” 

Kevin snorted and groaned, one after the other in a classic post-binge sort of way. Damn. “Broke my lease before I headed to Staten Island,” he said groggily. “Mom’s letting me crash until I find a place nearby.” 

Ezra grinned despite himself. “Where she can keep an eye on you,” he assumed. 

“Yeah.” Kevin cursed over the line and Ezra could hear the sounds of the younger man sitting up. “Sorry. Went out last night with a few of the guys from the neighborhood.” He hissed, but suddenly sounded more awake. “Damn. Is it really already one?” 

“Evidently,” Ezra replied. He’d ask if Kevin was making a habit of drinking these days, but he knew from experience that right now, well-meaning _help_ was the last thing Kevin would want. “Enjoying your time off?” 

“Yeah, sure,” Kevin barked back with bitter sarcasm. He relented immediately. “Sorry, Ezra. You’d think a three-week paid vacation would be a treat after that, right?” 

Ezra clucked his tongue. “Three weeks? What is your captain thinking? You’ll go insane.” He knew from experience. 

“You’re assuming that hasn’t happened already,” Kevin said flatly. “They don’t have a lot of choice. I do have fourteen months of vacation accrued and the NYPD is known for being cranky about its paperwork.” A door opened and closed in the background. “I spent the first week back filling out forms and debriefing. _There’s_ part of the job I didn’t miss.” 

“The only part, I’d wager.” 

A fond tone crept into his cousin’s voice. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Um, where are you? Somebody’s going to come looking for Cormac sooner or later, right?” He was clearly more hungover than he sounded, not to notice the difference between that flat New Jersey accent and Ezra’s now-restored Southern drawl. 

Ezra smiled in relief. “His crew met with a federal misfortune recently. Cormac O’Connell is headed to California to face charges in a number of nefarious plots.” 

“That’s great, cuz!” Kevin told him, warm and genuine. “I take it Fenton’s texts helped push things over the edge?” 

Ezra flexed his left arm muscles, feeling the pain of the movement’s pull on his cracked and healing shoulder blade. “They did,” he said shortly. 

“Bad?” Kevin asked after a long silence on both ends. 

“No worse than it had to be, I suppose,” Ezra replied. There was nothing else to say. He’d decide whether—and how—to pursue Fallon and the shooting and the missing $80,000 when he’d had a chance to find himself again. When he wasn’t likely to go off half-cocked, Mick Hanlon’s mob and Cormac O’Connell’s temper coloring his thoughts. “Regardless, the O’Connell boys are done for the time being.” 

“Thank God,” Kevin murmured. “Seriously, how do you do this? I feel like…” 

“You should be one of the miscreants behind bars?” 

Kevin sighed. “Or at least not allowed in my mother’s house.” 

Ezra nodded, sitting on the edge of his couch. It felt too plush and rich for Cormac O’Connell’s bones. “It’ll pass.” 

“If you say so.” Kevin groaned in pain. “You know, getting drunk with the guys was fun when I was twenty-one.” Ezra heard water running into a glass and a harsh swallow over the line. “Now I remember why I gave up partying.” 

“Catching up on lost time?” Ezra asked gently. 

“What?” Kevin said. “No. No, I just needed to…” Embarrassment crept into his tone. “Getting out of there was harder than I thought, and… See, there was this girl.” 

Ezra couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Kevin, there’s always a girl with you.” 

Kevin’s voice became very quiet. “Yeah. This one was different.” He sighed. “She wasn’t involved… really. Ran Shannon’s bar.” 

“Siobhan,” Ezra said suddenly. “You mentioned her before.” 

“Yeah. I… We were serious. Really serious.” He fell silent for a long, cold moment. “God, I left a note on the dresser, can you believe it?” Kevin grated angrily, shame coloring his words. “The captain ordered me to get out and I couldn’t even tell her I was leaving. I wrote all the right crap about being made and having to disappear, but she was lying in the bed in the next damn room and I chickened out.” 

There was nothing to say about that. Ezra had done it. Once. “Mine was Sally,” he admitted. “Sally Marsters. I was pulled out because the Bureau had a tip I was about to be outed to the head of the group I’d infiltrated.” He sighed, remembering that night. “I didn’t even leave a note. Just disappeared.” 

“I couldn’t do that,” Kevin said. “I couldn’t just disappear on her or Bobby would have figured she had something to do with it, you know? I shouldn’t have had to leave in the first place.” His voice went hard—harder than Ezra had ever heard it. “They pulled me out too early, Ezra. I could have taken the whole damn thing down if they’d just given me a little more time.” 

“Or we’d all be attending your funeral,” Ezra shot back harshly, not liking the edge of obsession in Kevin’s voice. “They had their reasons.” 

“Danny’s been grooming his successor, Bobby— _my best friend_. If they’d given me six more months, I probably could have had the bible and shut the whole thing down.” 

“The more you think about this, the more it is going to burn you up inside, Kevin,” Ezra told him bluntly. “You did your job. You made a difference. You came home to your family.” He softened his tone, his barely-remembered father heavy on his mind. “We both know not all people in our line of business get the trifecta.” 

“Yeah. No—I didn’t mean…” Kevin blew out a breath and when he spoke again, his tone was lighter. “So, stop obsessing and get the hell off your mom’s couch, is what you’re saying?” 

“And don’t drink yourself into the next afternoon,” Ezra added. 

Kevin chuckled at that. “One time thing, Ezra, I promise.” There was a long pause. “I don’t think I can do that again,” he whispered finally, as if admitting defeat. He wasn’t talking about tying one on the night before. 

“I hope that’s true,” Ezra said. The silence was deafening. “Kevin, you have a family that loves you. Friends, _roots_. And more, you have what your dear Aunt Maude would call a gentle soul.” 

Kevin snorted. “I’m supposed to be listening to Aunt Maude now?” 

“Oh Lord, no, Kevin—I’m trying to steer you toward the _right_ decisions in life.” Their mutual mirth flattened out. “You hated being Fenton O’Connell—“ 

“See, that’s the problem—“ 

“—because you _enjoyed_ being Fenton O’Connell,” Ezra finished. An image of Mick Hanlon, laughing over a game of poker, came to him suddenly. He missed him—felt perversely disappointed for having missed the funeral… 

“There’s a particular kind of person who can set aside who they are and become who they need to be without paying for it for the rest of their lives.” He let a sad smile creep into his voice. “We’re decidedly less savory than you.” 

“Ezra,” Kevin scolded. 

“I’m simply saying that the feeling of enjoying even a minute of your time with the bad guys most certainly made your skin crawl. And it should. But if you can’t set aside Kevin Ryan to become Fenton O’Connell without being able to do the reverse just as easily, then this is the wrong business for you.” He sighed. “You will eat yourself alive.” 

Kevin took a very, very long time to digest that. 

“It was… fun isn’t the right word, I guess… trying to piece together the clues on those DEA murders,” he said finally. “I like Narco. I like getting the drugs off the street, helping people get out of the life, but this was different.” He seemed to be trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say. “Hernandez and Parker—the agents? Their families have closure now. These people aren’t just file numbers and unsolved murders. To their families, they were… unanswered questions.” 

“And you liked answering them.” Ezra smiled. His cousin was remarkable. 

“Yeah.” Kevin brightened up, and Ezra was glad to hear that the shift was genuine. “Listen, you sound tired, and I should probably go find a place to live, huh? Can’t sleep on Mom’s couch forever.” 

“She’s rented your room?” Ezra asked with a chuckle. 

“You know what I mean,” Kevin lobbed back. He sobered suddenly. “Thanks. I…” He petered out, unsure of what to say. “Thanks,” he repeated. 

“Any time.” 

The call disconnected and Ezra sat on his couch, more comfortable in the plush of it than he had been before. Kevin would be back to work before he knew it, and Ezra would as well. And they’d have each other, should they need it. 

Padding for a nest of an altogether different kind. 

******** 

Ezra took a couple of days to let the stink of Hanlon’s crew slough off of him and then quietly, unassumingly, showed up in the evidence room. The vision of Rick Fallon and his smoking gun had never left him, and he had to know for sure. 

“Good morning, Gentry,” he greeted the agent at the main desk. “How have you been?” 

“Lord, Ezra Standish!” Jake Gentry was from Montgomery, Alabama and his skin was black and leathery with years and hard living. He was fifty-eight years old, plump around the middle, and sported a limp from an incendiary device that had caught him when he was a younger agent. His ‘Bama accent was booming and jovial, and Ezra always got a lift from seeing him. Even now. 

“I heard you were finally back. Heard you busted Alvarez, too.” The older man gestured to Ezra’s strapped shoulder. “You healing up okay? Looks like they messed you up good.” 

Ezra kept his smile. “All in a day’s work, Gentry, as you know.” He leaned his good arm on the counter. “I am tasked with the onerous chore of examining everything before it goes to the prosecution for review.” He sighed. “Lord, the wheels of justice take a load of greasing, don’t they?” 

Gentry chuckled, gesturing Ezra to sign the log, then waving him to the side door and buzzing him in. “All the boxes we have on the Hanlon case are still in prelim holding, bay 12, so you won’t have to worry about pulling them down with that shoulder of yours.” He smiled as he led Ezra to the room and keyed in the security code. “Let me know if you need any help, though, yeah?” 

Ezra grinned, his mind bitterly noticing that he received more support from the evidence clerk than he did from his own team. “I will, Jake, thanks.” 

Bay 12 was filled with boxes of papers and paraphernalia, and Ezra removed the clipboard from the wall and logged himself in, checking the itemized list to see where to start first. Ballistics, he guessed. 

First though, Ezra reviewed the agents on scene that night, and was unsurprised to see that the team had been supplemented by a few of Fallon’s cronies. It was unlikely that the theft—if there was a theft—and the shooting—if Fallon did the shooting—were anything more than a crime of opportunity, but Fallon seemed the type to always cover his bases, just in case. 

Ezra drew out his notebook and sketched a quick diagram of where he knew people to be before the shootout. Joey Green would have had to move through the gunfight from one side of the warehouse to the other to be the one to shoot him. Which seemed unlikely and made Ezra wonder what excuse Fallon could give for the drug dealer being able to move that freely during a federal operation. 

As it was, Joey was dead, Stabler and Johnny were hardly reliable witnesses, and Ezra himself could be made to look confused due to the nature of his injury, so perhaps Fallon didn’t need to worry about defending himself. 

Ballistics on the bullets that killed Joey and Alvarez’s second-in-command, plus the one that impacted with Alvarez’s vest and the two that found their way into Johnny’s brother, all pointed to Fallon as the shooter. _Cleaning house,_ Ezra realized, with a sick feeling. If Fallon was there for the entire deal, he would surmise that Hanlon’s crew and Alvarez and his second would all know the amount of money in the case. 

And Ezra himself, of course. 

As expected, Stabler had killed Mick Hanlon, and the shot Ezra let loose when he was wounded was the one that hit Stabler in the shoulder. The rest of the FBI team seemed to have taken care of Alvarez’s men. 

“Very tidy, Mr. Fallon,” Ezra murmured to himself. Swallowing hard, he flipped through to do the gruesome work of finding the ballistics on his own shooting. And came up empty. 

He leaned over and pushed the button on the intercom, his hand unsteady as he predicted what he might find. “Agent Gentry? Where are the ballistics on the bullet that lodged in my back, please?” 

There was a moment’s pause, then the sound of shuffling paper when Gentry activated the mic. “Looks like the bullet was misplaced at the hospital,” he said simply. “Happens sometimes—but we have testimony from Agent Fallon that Green was the guy who shot you.” 

Ezra closed his eyes. Maybe his mother was right—no one was to be trusted with his well being, save him. “I see,” he responded, voice calm and normal. “I expect, as he’s dead, he’s already been made to pay for the crime.” 

_One he did not commit._ He looked down to see his one good hand shaking badly atop the file of ballistics reports. He was sure every bullet of Fallon’s would be magically accounted for. Lord… 

Taking a deep breath and willing his shaking to stop, he closed the file and opened the next, doing the job of reviewing the evidence. It was flawless. Perfectly flawless, in fact. Apparently, looking good at your job _did_ mean you were bad, sometimes. Fallon would get away scot free. 

Alvarez and his men had been spirited away by the DEA, but there were copies of Johnny and Stabler’s interrogations. They’d both been only too happy to roll over on each other—and Mick and Cormac. But Ezra knew they knew almost nothing. They’d get transferred to the local LEOs and incarcerated in Atlanta’s legal system, and probably be out in an embarrassingly short amount of time. 

He lingered over his own notes, mailed to his undercover dropbox the day before the bust and retrieved by Marks at some point. Ten months of his life, condensed into a book full of misdeeds and evil doings. God, what a life he lived... 

The last box held personal effects of the deceased, plus the things he himself had had on him at the time of the operation. He made sure he never acquired much, no matter how long he stayed undercover, and he had mailed his important possessions to his own post office box at the same time he’d sent his notebook. Amid the random coins and receipts that had been in his pockets when the bullets started flying sat Cormac O’Connell’s phone. He turned it on, looking at the text stream from Fenton O’Connell. 

`BS says you got your own rat. ES out of NOLA. Watch your ass.`

“Truer words, my friend,” he murmured. 

He turned off the phone, signed off on the evidence, and headed back to the desk. 

“All done, Standish?” Gentry asked. “That was fast.” 

Ezra nodded. “A cut and dried case,” he said easily. He logged out of the evidence area and waited to be buzzed through the door. 

“You take care of yourself, Standish,” Gentry said, once he was through. 

“I always do, Jake,” he replied, continuing once he was out of earshot, “Clearly no one else is going to.” 

****** 

Ezra ended his call with his Aunt Lil and settled back on his couch as carefully as he could. Kevin seemed to be doing fine, though a mother’s intuition told her maybe Kevin had met someone while he was “away.” Maybe someone important. Ezra neither confirmed nor denied. It was Kevin’s story to tell, if he chose. 

Tomorrow was Monday, and Ezra would be back with Pontiere’s team after nearly a year away. He’d spoken to Marks regularly, of course, while he was undercover, but since he knew almost none of the new team members, he didn’t expect a warm welcome. He wouldn’t have expected a warm welcome with his original team, either, though, would he? 

Why in God’s name did he stay in this damnable profession? At least when he had been working with his mother, in those questionable years between seventeen and twenty-three, he’d had friends. Compatriots. Not always savory, mind, but he’d trusted them to back him in a fight, at least. 

It was easier to trust no one, now. Trust was a policy that showed diminishing returns, as his mother would say. He was sure his father would have disagreed, but he was hardly here to argue, which only proved the truth of his mother’s statement. 

He remembered his father vaguely, the way one remembers oneself as a young child filtered through stories other people tell. Michael Standish had been a police officer, a defender of the law, trusted to keep people safe. The only ones he’d really failed in that were his wife and child, and when he died, Maude, who had never been exactly law-abiding before her marriage, had reverted to her old ways and taken her son with her. 

But blood will out, as they say. Ezra smiled, thinking about his cousins: Kevin in New York and Jimmy, a DEA agent in San Francisco. Law enforcement was genetic, apparently. The Standishes were fools, Maude had told him angrily, the day he’d turned his back on the upscale grifting that was their lives and entered the Academy. Fools to endlessly tilt at windmills and fight for those who were only going to lose anyway, regardless of who championed them. 

She was probably right, Ezra thought, draining the last of the wine he shouldn’t really be having with the painkillers still in his system. And she’d be right, now, in saying that it was his own fault he’d been taken down by one of his own, because he should have known none of them could be trusted. Everyone had an ulterior motive and everyone was out for himself. 

_“Kevin thinks he failed,” his Aunt Lil said, sadness in her tone. “Honestly, Ezra, I don’t know what else he thought he could do?”_

“Nothing,” Ezra whispered. There was nothing any of them could do but their jobs, right? He couldn’t prove Fallon shot him and he knew it. And he’d likely end up dead for real if he pursued this too closely. God knew Fallon had to have more friends in the Bureau than Ezra did. Scot free with $80,000... 

_“There’s always a way into anyone’s pocket, darling,” his mother said, more times than he could count. “All you have to find is the little crack to pry your way in.”_

He sat up suddenly, wincing against the pain in his back as that thought floated through his head. The little crack… No, he’d never convince anyone that Fallon had shot him, but if he could find the money…? 

He dialed a number in Denver, Colorado, and waited, walking to the kitchen for another glass of wine. 

“Ezra!” Will Mackley’s voice came clear and happy over the line. “Well, hell, kid, how are you?” 

Ezra grinned. Will had been his mother’s paramour when Ezra was twelve, and he’d stayed in touch with the child he’d unofficially adopted even after he and Maude had called it quits. He was the best computer hacker Ezra knew, and unsavory enough to know all the best places to hide your money. 

And Ezra trusted him. 

“Doing fine, as always, Will,” he lied. “I was wondering if I might prevail upon you to do me a little favor…” 

*****  
the end


End file.
